Pokemon! You got some fucking Pokemon!

Pokemon, Go Pee in a Magicarp Infested Lake!

In 2008, a question was submitted to Chiebukuro forum on Yahoo! Japan asking how one would go about buying Japanese stock, particularly in a company of their interest, Nintendo of Japan (they make games and stuff). The top answer said this: Yesterday (this was in 2008, so actually quite a few yesterdays ago), the stock (kabu, or “radish”) closed at ¥40,600. Now the minimum amount of radishes one can buy is 100, meaning that the minimum possible investment you could make in Nintendo would be 4,060,000 yen or about $40K. And this was in 2008 prices – and who know what shit has changed since then? I suppose it’s not a very good reference, chiebukuro, but usually they get the gist of it right.

Buy me a radish – my Nintendo kickstarter.

Hey, buy me 40K worth, and I’ll let you have one if we meet the goal.

For more information, click this link and learn why you should give me money, motherfucker. (insery link to kickstarter here)

But you have to act fast. Funds may be transferred to the purchase of a Playstation 4 if the goal for Nintendo stock is not met.

It makes sense that with all of the insane, inane, and memetic refrains of Pokemon Go!, it would be a sound investment, especially since hearing that the stocks went way up over there in the States once the game was released. Who wouldn’t want some of that cabbage, or radish, as it were?

But you and me are not getting rich off this nigh-guaranteed boost to the economy – Nintendo is, and they deserve it. We, we are getting Pokemon. That is all; nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps less deserving are the fuckheads at Google who just got millions of Pokemon trainers to give full access to their Google account when they signed up. Class action lawsuit? Now that’s a way to get rich, although I think South Park may have already tackled this issue. I will not be profiting from such a class-action lawsuit, either. I have never even been fired by Nintendo. That should change.

And speaking of changin’ and times how they a’be, have you seen what this Pokemon Go shit is doing to people? Wow. Everybody looks so terrible doing it. Sorry, but you do, and I’m about to join you doing it, too.. We just need poise, people.

(insert video of people stupidly playing that fucking game that i’m about to play if they ever release it here)

Today, I realized how awful I’m going to look walking around the streets of Japan, phone in hand, and the digital shutter sound going off each time I take a picture of an invisible fucking Pokemon. Man, you have no idea what a creep I felt like when I took this picture.

(insert picture of park)

And there wasn’t even anything there.

Soon, there will be kids there.

I actually ventured further into the park to take a picture of these posters:
They say: FUCK OFF BITCH (left) and EPICUZIPLAYIT owns this gym and you can’t beat me (right).

(insert picture of rice paddy with rain softly falling)
This one turned out okay, though – walking through the rice paddy to get the Lapras, though… try explaining that to the lady whose crop you just trampled.

This augmented bordering on demented (and errors must be prevented) reality game is already having a huge effect on my kids who have sometime during 2016 have already become bonafide Pokemon nerds, and yet the game is still yet to drop (13:25 Tuesday the 11th – nope, still not up). I check compulsively for it to appear because I’m a fully-fledged Pokeman nerd, too.

My Pokemans; Let me Show you Them

Can I confess something here? I just beat my first Pokemon game for the first time about a month ago. It was the weekend, my oldest was playing Pokemon Pearl, and so I fired up my copy of Diamond. I didn’t set out to beat the game when I turned it on, but I realized the alternative was more grinding, which I had just spent some weeks, some weeks ago doing, and it was not very satisfying. So I thought I’d go all out and challenge the Elite Four (which I think was actually Five now that I think about it), and use all my items and be as cheap as fuck. I only allowed myself one of the level 100 Pokemon that we discovered when we bought Guy’s used copy of Pearl – a shiny Mewtwo – but the rest were dudes I trained, caught or acquired personally.

It was a hard battle – really hard, I have to say, but we prevailed. And this is my Hall of Fame:

(insert picture of Pokemon finishers)

Yeah, that’s right – a shiny Mewtwo. It was one of the many rare and wonderful Pokemon that were in the last trainer’s file. Shinies, Legendaries, Level 100s, from the rare to ultra-rare, it was a treasure trove of magical creatures, many of whom we deleted out of existence. After about two hours of trading as many as I could onto my copy of Diamond, Guy was getting impatient (we bought the game for him to play, after all), and we finally deleted the old file so that Guy could begin his own Pokemon adventure. And I have no fucking regrets. I have a shiny… whatever this red fucker’s who’s on the cover of Ruby is.

(insert picture of that red fucker who’s green-yellow now)

And hey, I’ll admit this, too: I’m a bad trainer – I’ve never leveled anything up to 100, and I’ll abandon Pokemon games for years, sometimes decades at a time (I still have a file on Leaf Green from 2004 that has all eight badges, but no Championshit). But I like Pokemon well enough. Remember when Twitch played it and I got all holy roller fever on Lord Helix? Whether Go! is here to stay or fulfill the prophecy of its namesake, one thing’s for sure: my interest will wane as surely as it has waxed again. But I got kids now – junior trainers in training. Whether I enjoy it or not, I am aboard the Pokemon express with them at the moment, and there’s probably no getting off it this summer. At least until the new Yokai Watch… oh shit. The new Yokai Watch is coming out on Saturday…

Pokemon to the left of me, Yokai to the right, here I am.

Pokemon vs. Yokai Watch

No contest.

It’s going to be a monstrous summer.

13:55 – still not up

Just remembered one time back in the day when my friend Andy and I were driving back to town from Vincennes, blasting the Misfits and changing every lyric Glenn Danzig wrote to be Pokemon themed. London Dungeon would have been… Pokemon Dungeon, Last Caress would begin with the refrain, “I got something to say! I caught a Weedle today!” I’ve hardly ever laughed so hard – after we were at it for like 20 minutes, I knew the song “Attitude” was coming on, and Andy just changed he whole title to “Pokemon!” and it’s the first lyric of the song, so when he belted it out, it was one of those, oh my god, we’re so fucking silly, man kinda moments. Man, I miss that fucker. He and I Pokemonned way back in the day. Once, he James and I were all at James’ place, smoking cigarettes in the garage and playing Pokemon on Gameboys and Gameboy Colors. I might have even bought a fucking Pikachu-version Pokemon/GBC pack at Wal-Mart that night – in fact, I’m sure I did. I remember in my dorm, freshman year at IU some months before that when I had to yell at the girl in the hall to shut the fuck up because I was trying to watch the first series of the Pokemon cartoon on TV.

So many memories. Yeah. So. How you doing? Oh no, I’m not just killing time at work checking the App Store every 20 minutes (14:03 – still not up), waiting to go home and play some Dragon Quest Builders before I have to go to fucking work again. Nah. I’m a professional. But I am fucking bored, and would rather be out looking like a creep snapping Pokemon than sitting in this nice air conditioned room having to do jack shit but exist and write about Pokemon and shit.

I’m going to eat some ice cream.

(14:15 – still not up)

Shit, now I guess I’m checking every ten minutes. Jesus, read a book.

14:41 – still not up (a confederacy of dunces is fucking hilarious, though)

15:15 – still not up

15:49 – still not up

16:09 – nope

Days passed, and the weekend finally came. Then I got drunk and finally posted this entry.

July 18, 2:38 a.m. – still not up.

You know what? I’m… going to bed. With visions of weird anthro-pokemorphic radishes dancin in my head. I think we all need a break. You should try Yokai Watch.